


Fury

by Vanja



Series: Alternate Timelines [1]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Like Way Pre, M/M, Pietro is 15 in the Beginning, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Relationship, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 16:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18703477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanja/pseuds/Vanja
Summary: In the comics, Wanda and Pietro pass as mutants, but their powers were always a result of experimentation.What if Pietro's powers develop differently, and he is placed on a different trajectory? What if he is deemed too dangerous, too valuable, or too unpredictable to use?What if the Winter Soldier meets him on one of his many breaks in programming, running from Hydra, and running directly into a path of another organization that wants to use him?Marvel alternate timeline brain fart 2.0





	1. Chapter 1

He pays attention to his surroundings, counts his steps, memorizes turns and twists and stairways. He commits the sound of the elevator code to memory. He knows the exact moment they are no longer above ground by the shift in the pressure and the ventilation. He’s deep inside the bowels of the beast by the time they force him to stop, and the beast, by his estimation, is enormous. Technically, it could be anywhere, bottom of the sea or the middle of the desert. They had kept him knocked out for the duration of the trip for a reason. Still, he’s pretty certain they are in a mountain, or now, beneath one. Precise location is beyond him, but if he has to gamble, he would guess far East. Precious little to go on.

It keeps him calm though, planning escape routes, memorizing sounds and smells and details. These people, they aren’t Hydra, they are something else. For all intents and purposes, he would do well to think of them as Hydra-adjacent. Hopefully, they lack Hydra’s ability to control him. Hydra and Red Army kept their Winter Soldier files highly confidential. It would have been impossible to keep his existence a secret for nearly a century, nor did they try; he had been a type of weapon that could win arguments by its sheer existence. It’s not surprising that any organization with a similar purpose and structure would do all in their power to get their hands on a weapon like the Winter Soldier. What irks is that they managed it. That they actually caught him, and that they caught him through sheer luck as opposed to any planned out strategy.

They had shorted out his arm. It’s hanging uselessly by his side, the weight all the more burdensome now that he has no control over it. He’d taken two bullets trying to escape, in his right thigh and the right shoulder, and both are healing slowly. Those are the primary concerns. Heal, figure out how to get the power back to his arm, then find a way to escape. His time in captivity will be determined by the type of programming and technology they have access to, and how much of it can be used to control him. When they finally take his blindfold off, he finds himself exactly where he’d expected to end up. A holding cell.

The wall across from him looks to be solid concrete; the walls to the left and right are bullet proof glass of impossible thickness. He estimates six to eight inches. Even if his arm was in full working order, he might find it easier to break through the concrete. Concrete ceiling and floor. Two other cells, one on each side of him, separated by the glass. Same glass makes up the front wall, except that it’s reinforced by steel rods and a steel door. Inside, it feels like a fish tank. Deceptively light and appearing large on the fist glance, although a closer look shows dimensions no larger than twelve square feet.

Once inside, with his blindfold removed, he is shoved unceremoniously forward, and the door slides closed behind him. The double locking mechanism sounds both pressurized and electronic, and the grinding slide of steel once the locking mechanism is engaged, tells him that the third lock is basically a solid steel bar. Faint panic climbs up his throat and he pushes it down. He’d escaped from more secure places. He can’t quite remember the details, but he remembers that much.

The space is impersonal and stark. The steel bed, toilet, and sink, all seem a part of the concrete base. He has a mattress, a pillow and a blanket, all of which look new and unused. A single towel, and a grey prison uniform. There is an open shower in the right corner, with a multitude of small drains below it. There is nowhere to hide. The hallway outside the cells is large and bright and completely empty. On each end of the hallway, there is a solid steel elevator door with complicated keypads. But there are cameras everywhere. It’s immediately apparent that he won’t be able to flinch without being observed from every angle.

The cell to his right is empty, but the cell to his left isn’t. Someone is sitting crosslegged on a bed that looks exactly like his own, dressed in the grey uniform. The stranger lifts his head, and blue eyes briefly meet his. It’s a man; a kid. He looks no older than twenty, with a smoothly shaved face and hollow cheeks. His hair is messy and short, a blonde that approaches some impossible shade of silver. He looks pale and washed out against the concrete wall. His lips are a smear of faint color in a bloodless face. Even his eyebrows are pale.

Their eyes only meet for a moment, and the Winter Soldier, the deadliest assassin of the last century, is dismissed as unimportant. That much is obvious in the kid’s gaze, the blank facial expression, the cool return of concentration to the book in his lap.

The Soldier studies the boy’s cell, noticing that it looks lived in. There are books next to the bed, only about six of them, and most well worn. There is a spare uniform and a couple of extra towels folded up in the corner. The boy has an extra blanket too, and a bar of soap on the floor next to the shower. No socks, no shoes, no food, or cups, or any other meal implements.

The Soldier turns to study his own cell. The bed is made. There is a roll of toilet paper next to the toilet. There is no soap to be seen. The glass wall separating them has drilled and reinforced holes near the ceiling; air holes in a glass tank. He wonders if the boy spoke, whether the Soldier could hear him. He wonders if the boy _can_ speak.

He walks the cell. His initial assessment was nearly perfect; twelve feet by ten feet. The weak points are the glass walls separating the cells, precisely due to the air holes, and the glass wall that holds the door. Access to water will be useful, especially when it comes to the electronic lock of the door. The drains can be plugged and the toilet and sink stoppered. That still leaves the pressurized locking mechanism and the steel component.

He can’t see a a way out yet, not unless the right set of circumstances present themselves. But he is sure, whether it takes days, or weeks, or months, he  _will_ eventually get out.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The first 24 hours constitute as the trial and error period. He makes errors.

Food comes, he eats it. It’s mush. Green mush, brown mush, orange mush. He’s pretty sure the brown mush is some type of meat, the other two vegetables. Maybe. It doesn’t matter. He’s lived in captivity before. He understands that he needs to keep his strength up.

The boy in the cell next to him leaves the orange mush untouched. The Soldier finds out why only an hour later, when his stomach is seized with violent cramps. He’s grateful for the toilet, the toilet paper, and then the bed.

Error number one.

Approximately five hours after he’s brought in, the lights shut down. It’s not completely dark, emergency lights set in the hallway walls giving about as much illumination as a full moon on a clear night. But it’s obviously bed time. The boy knew it was coming. He put his book away, washed his face at the sink, rinsed his mouth, took his shirt off. He was in bed some five minutes before the lights went out. Bucky crawls into the bed in the dark. Not necessarily an error; or at least he hopes not.

He doesn’t sleep. He needs to know if anything happens in the darkness, if anything changes. He needs to know how long the lights-out period lasts. Seven hours go by. The boy gets up, drops to the floor, does thirty push-ups. His skin is ghastly white under the pale emergency lights. He glows in the darkness. He’s thin, his ribs prominent, but his shoulders are wide. The Soldier thinks the diet is designed to keep him underweight. The boy gets on his back and does thirty sit-ups. Thirty more push ups and the lights flare back on. The Soldier shuts his eyes. He’s tired now.

He hears the faint sound of running water. The boy is in the shower. A glance shows him completely naked under the spray. The Soldier looks away, then looks back. It’s a methodical washing process, from the top down. He’s done in minutes. He dries, puts his shirt and pants back on. He settles back on the bed, crosslegged, leans back, and closes his eyes. The Soldier does the same.

Some five minutes later, another tray comes. The men who deliver the trays are masked, much like the masks the Soldier used to wear. Only a strip of skin between the cheekbones and eyes is visible. Their movements say military. Their weapons say terrorists. They don’t speak.

Mush again. Pink mush, yellow mush, green mush. The Soldier watches the boy clear his tray then does the same. An hour later his stomach is still okay. Live and learn.

Another hour goes by. The boy reads, only moving to turn the pages. The Soldier waits for something. Then something comes.

Five of them, at once. They enter his cell fully armed and the door shuts behind them. He wonders if he could kill all of them with only one working arm. They don’t give him a chance to find out. He’s hit with so much electricity that he blacks out for a few moments, his teeth closing on his tongue, filling his mouth in blood. They do it again, and again. The aftershocks are the worst part. He feels like he has no control over his limbs. His brain feels fried to crisp. He can smell hair burning.

They cut his clothes off and push him under the shower head. The water is ice cold. They leave him there and he stays, unable to move, long after they’ve gone. He can see the boy out of the corner of his eye, still sitting on the bed, calmly turning the pages. When he can finally shut the water off and get himself out, his skin is pruned. He feels cold down to the bone. The clothes they’ve cut off him are gone. He puts on the grey uniform with a shaky hand. Dries his hair. Crawls back into the bed.

Error number two.

His body estimates it’s close to lunch time when the boy puts his book away. He steps into the center of the cell and kneels, with his head bowed and his hands clutched behind him. For a moment the Soldier is sure the boy is praying, despite the odd position of his body. Then the elevator opens. Two men step into the boy’s cell. One holds a long silver leash that hooks to the thin silver collar around the boy’s neck. They don’t need to tug. The boy is like a trained dog. He stands, his hands still behind him, and follows the men out.

The Soldier’s turn doesn’t go over so well. For one, he has no collar and there is no leash. But the do stun him and drag him out. He expects an interrogation, and that’s exactly what happens, but it’s not so bad for the first time around. They hold him under water until he passes out. They knock him around. The questions come from a speaker and none of his interrogators talk. He makes no sound. A few hours later they drag him back. He’s bruised but conscious, and nothing seems to be broken. If that was the extent of their interrogation techniques, he can probably hold out indefinitely. The boy is back on his bed, unharmed, book open on his knees. The Soldier drags himself to his bed and shuts his eyes. Falls asleep. Misses dinner and the lights out.

Error number three.

He lies awake in the dark for a long time, and watches the boy go through his routine. When the lights turn on, he gets up and takes a shower. Eats the mush that the boy eats, kneels on the floor when the boy kneels. They take him away first. When they come for the Soldier, they fit him with a silver collar too, and attach a leash. He follows them without needing to be pushed or pulled. But he says nothing. For over three hours, he makes no sound. They drag him back like the day before, but he stays sitting up despite the pain. He eats his supper. Gets ready for bed when the boy does. Crawls in when the lights go out. Sleeps. Wakes up in the darkness, watches the boy do the push-ups. The day repeats like the last and the one before it.

So far, physically, he can hold out indefinitely. Mentally, he thinks he will probably go insane in less than six months. He wonders if this is why the boy reads. He wonders who he is, what his name is, why is he in the same situation. How long has he been there, following the same routine?


	3. Chapter 3

He counts days. On the eight day, the interrogation techniques shift. They offer rewards instead of punishment. Real food, books, an extra blanket. Real food would be tempting to anyone else, but they don’t know the mush they provide is a large improvement over the Soldier’s standard diet. He doesn’t feel tempted. He runs hot too, and although the cells are cold, it hasn’t bothered him so far. It’s the books that tempt him. He wonders if this is how they broke the boy. He wonders if the boy is even broken, or if he simply decided compliance was the best choice from the start.

It doesn’t matter. The rewards don’t work on the Soldier.

By the tenth day, it’s back to torture. They find out he heals faster and make use of it. They break his fingers, his ankles, his wrist. They slice into his abdomen and his back. It fucking hurts, and he’s no stranger to pain. He can no longer pride himself on making no sound. But he tells them nothing.

It becomes harder and harder to keep to the routine. By his thirtieth day in the cell, the Soldier is watching the boy constantly, using him as an anchor. He follows the boy’s motions on autopilot. They get him through the next handful of hours, and the handful after that. He’s becoming stupidly grateful for the boy’s presence. He’s tired all the time, he hurts, his arm is still a dead weight. He watches the boy read. He watches him exercise, shower, eat. They boy never looks his way.

He tries not to lose the count of days, but somewhere shy of two months, they knock him out and he doesn’t regain consciousness for a while. He’s not sure how long he’s out, but he wakes up back on his bed, the boy in the shower, and it’s apparently morning. The next day? The day after? He can’t be sure. He feels the first inkling of fear and pushes it down. He lets go of the need to keep track of days. They don’t matter. It matters that he gets up and showers, eats his food, gets as much rest as possible before it’s time to kneel again. He wonders if the boy knows how long he’s been here, if he counts days, or hours, or minutes.

Still, he can’t help but count the days. Fifty-three days before the blackout plus seventeen days after the blackout, the interrogation technique shifts again. They don’t hurt him. They humiliate him. He thinks it will be easier to bear than the pain, but it isn’t. He bears it though, for nearly a week. He’s sure they only stop because his weight starts to plummet alarmingly. They have no interest in exerting any extra effort just to get nutrition into him. He starts to wonder if the boy is even real, or just a projection. He feels unanchored, drifting through time and space. He’s getting dizzy a lot, falling asleep in the light hours and lying awake in the dark ones.

They always take him to the same place, and take the same path back. He knows each closed door like the back of his hand. Each camera, each emergency light, each bolt in the elevator. It’s all worth nothing. His arm is still dead, and he has no way to get out. He’s starting to feel despair. He knows he can hold out until the end, but now the end seems relatively close. Another six months at most. Even with the enhancements, he’s still human, and humans need to want to live. He wants to live less and less every day.

\--

Some forty days past the second time they knock him out and he loses track of time, he finds that he can’t get up again. He supposes that he actually could, if he tried, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t care enough to. They come in and drag him into the shower. He drags himself out, but doesn’t go far. He doesn’t eat his food. He doesn’t kneel. They drag him to interrogation, drag him back. He stays where they drop him. Supper comes and goes untouched. He stays on the floor. The next day finds him in the same spot. This time, he doesn’t bother dragging himself out of the shower when they lave him there. He doesn’t move until they come to get him. He doesn’t move when they drag him back. He doesn’t eat. In a way he supposes this means they’ve won, even though he hasn’t spoken a word to them, and they’ve gotten nothing but screams. He’s just too tired to care.

The lights go out, leaving him in the dark. He tries to figure out how long this will last before his body gives out like his mind has. He wants to say two weeks, at most, but his brain is sluggish, and he can’t force himself to consider it seriously. He closes his eyes.

“Get up,” a voice drifts to him in the darkness.

His eyes snap open. His heartbeat picks up, his fingers clench. The boy is on his knees, one hand pressed against the glass separating them. The light is weak, but those eerily pale eyes are staring right at him.

“Get up,” he says again, the sound coming reedy and faint through the air holes.

The Soldier has no energy to speak back.

“Why,” his mouth forms the words, but makes no sound.

It doesn’t matter, the boy seems to read it off his lips even in the dark. A small frown forms between his eyebrows, bordering on frustration. The Soldier is fascinated despite himself. He’s never seen any emotion on that face. He thinks he might have decided the boy incapable of emotion altogether. But there is emotion now, in his posture as he kneels by the glass, in the hand pressed against it, in the lines of his face, in his voice.

The boy has an accent. The Soldier thinks it might be Eastern European. He wants to hear it again. He shifts so he can see the boy better, realizing it’s the most he’s moved on his own in over twenty-four hours.

“Why,” he asks again, genuinely curious now.

He has no clue what the boy could possibly say that would make any difference. He watches the hand pressed against the glass, the shift of his shoulders, the set of his mouth. His eyelashes are nearly white. His collar bones sharp and fragile. The silver collar glints around his neck.

“Don’t leave me here alone,” the boy says.


	4. Chapter 4

He wakes to an insistent tapping next to his head. He’s curled up on the floor still, cool glass against his forehead. When he opens his eyes, the boy is there, on the other side of the glass, tapping away. The lights are on. The Soldier hurts. His throat is so dry that he’s not sure it can form words. The boy is on the ground too, kneeling still, or again, the Soldier isn’t sure. There’s only glass separating them now. The Soldier must’ve crawled to him in the night, but he doesn’t remember it. Up close, the boy is no less odd, but somehow beautiful.

“Get up,” the boy says, his face tight and worried.

For him? Why?

“Get in the shower before they come in and make you. Come on.”

He doesn’t think he can get up, but he does. He showers. He eats. He throws it all up, but it doesn’t matter. He’s done what he’s supposed to do. He even kneels, and waits for them to come and get him. The interrogation is only an hour and his interrogators seem uncertain. He wonders if they know why he feels alive again. He wonders who actually watches the feed from all those cameras, if they would put two and two together. When he gets back, the boy isn’t there yet, and his cell is empty. The Soldier’s stomach tightens. He hates to admit it, but he’s afraid again. Afraid the boy won’t come back. Afraid that he never existed in the first place, that the Soldier simply made him up. Minutes seems like hours, days.

Finally, the elevator opens, and they lead the boy back into his cell. He kneels neatly again in the center of his floor without being prompted. They unhook the leash from his neck and leave, and he doesn’t move until the elevator doors close behind them. Then he stand up and turns to the Soldier. Nods slightly. The Soldier nods back. It feels as if a great weight has been lifted from him, as if he’s gotten a week’s worth of vacation from this place.

He knows this is even more dangerous. Unlike before, now he wants to live again. But everything feels heavy and pressurized, like a gathering storm.

\--

The storm breaks two days later.

The morning is uneventful, and they’re both kneeling and waiting when the elevator doors open. But instead of the usual two guards that take the boy away, there are five. There is no leash. The Soldier sees the boy’s hands clench in the small of his back, and realizes the boy knew it was coming. He knew it the moment he saw five instead of two, or maybe even before, the same night he talked the Soldier into living again. The Soldier reacts without thinking, throwing himself at the wall separating them. They don’t seem to notice he even exists. Their fists and boots land on the boy in a steady and measured rhythm. The boy doesn’t try and defend himself. He curls up on the floor, arms folded over his head, his groans echoing back into The Soldier’s cell.

The Soldier strikes the glass with his metal shoulder over and over again until it’s chipping, tiny spider web cracks spreading outward. He feels wild, insane. He can’t tell how long the beating lasts, but it seems to go on forever. When it does stop, the boy is limp. There’s blood smeared on the cement floor, streaked through his hair, a pool collecting under his mouth. The guards leave.

When they come to collect him, the boy is still unconscious. Not dead. Not dead, The Soldier knows, he’s been pressed against the glass, trying to see if his chest would move. The boy is still breathing. The Soldier fights back. They seem to expect it, although they don’t expect the fury he puts behind it. By the time they finally manage to stun him, one of them is dead, two are bleeding. The Soldier howls in fury. They drag him out of the cell.

They dump him into the interrogation room and leave him alone. The speaker crackles.

“It appears that punishment will not entice you to speak. From this day forward, the punishment you should be receiving, will be dealt to your cellmate instead. Today was only the beginning. We will speak again tomorrow.”

\--

He sinks onto the ground next to the glass separating him from the boy, and stays there. He watches his chest move, and thinks that if he were a type of man who believed in God, he would pray. But he’s not, and he doesn’t. Instead he counts the boy’s breaths, pressed agains the glass.

Some three hundred breaths later, or three hundred and twenty-one to be exact, the boy moves. Groans. He tries to get his arms under himself, and fails. The Soldier wants to help, he wants to say something, but he can’t help, and there is nothing he can say. He watches the boy struggle to his knees. He watches him try and rise to his feet half a dozen times before he finally succeeds. Watches him stumble under the shower and turn it on, for the first time deviating from his day routine.

It takes the boy a long time to struggle out of the bloody scrubs. Even longer to get another pair on, once he’s out of the shower. His lip is still bleeding. One of his eyes is completely swollen shut. Bruises bloom all across white skin, red and purple. He moves as if all of his bones are fractured.

Afterwards, the boy makes his way over to the Soldier, and slides down the glass in front of him. His foreheads rests near the Soldier’s hand. He shakes all over like a leaf in high wind. the Soldier wants to tell him he should be in bed, under the blanket. He can’t seem to get any words out. When he finally does, it’s not the words he ever expected to say.

“I’ll tell them everything. Whatever they want to know.”

The boy shakes his head, but the Soldier doesn’t want to see it.

“It doesn’t matter any more. I don’t care. They can have it all.”

“Don’t,” the boy mouths.

His throat is the only thing that isn’t bruised. Long and pale and almost graceful. The silver around it looks heavier, somehow more dense the the one resting around the Soldier’s neck.

“What’s your name?” the Soldier asks.

The boy looks at him with his one good eye,  
“Pietro.”

“Nice to meet you Pietro,” the Soldier says, “I’m James, but my friends call me Bucky.”


	5. Chapter 5

The next day they take Pietro away on a leash. Bucky kneels and waits, doesn’t fight when they show, willingly makes his way to the interrogation room. There, he answers every question they put to him, in as much detail as possible. He gives up names, places, dates. It’s almost a relief. He knows he should care more, but he doesn’t. When they take him back to the cell, Pietro is sitting on his bed, reading a book. He looks up, sees Bucky, and smiles. The smile is sad, resigned. It’s not good enough, Bucky knows, this is just a lull. But he smiles back nonetheless.

Four days later Pietro can see out of both of his eyes again. His bruises are less angry. He sits next to the glass with Bucky and reads out loud. It’s a silly story about some miserable old lord living in some miserable old castle, making everyone around him miserable. Bucky loves it. He loves the rhythm of Pietro’s voice. It’s soothing, comforting. It’s becoming a home in the midst of despair. It makes his chest hurt and his fists clench. It makes him feel helpless. He drags his blankets and pillow over to the glass, and makes this his new bed. It doesn’t matter that Pietro doesn’t do the same.

Twenty-two days later he runs out of information. They want details about his assassinations, his handlers, his missions. He gives them all that he has. But he doesn’t have everything. His mind is still full of holes, memories lost over the decades. They press him, and he feels fear again. He can’t give them what he doesn’t have. The next day Pietro pays the price. Not with boots and fists, but thin sharp whips that split his skin like razors. Pietro never tries to defend himself, or escape, or hide. He shudders on the floor for a long time after the guards leave. If he hears Bucky’s cries and swears, and afterwards, useless apologies, he doesn’t show it. He still manages to clean himself before supper comes, and crawl his way back to the glass, as if seeking comfort Bucky can’t give. Bucky desperately tries to explain why he can’t give them what they want. Pietro presses his palm against the glass.

“Don’t talk,” he says, bottom lips split and bloody again, “It doesn’t matter. It was always going to end this way.”

Bucky swears he will not let it happen.

\----

When they take him the next day, he tells them about the trigger words, the hypnosis techniques, all the methods his previous handlers had used to extract his memories. He tries to explain that some of the information is simply gone. The wipes were thorough; he is not supposed to remember. He can’t tell if the interrogators believe him, but they don’t keep him for long. They will use the methods he gave them as quickly as they are able, but the information they can extract that way has its limits. He’s bought a few days at most, before they come for Pietro again. It’s time to act. Except that he still has no plan, and can see no way out.

Back in his cell, he settles next to the glass and waits for Pietro. Watches the boy exit the elevator slowly, every movement careful, as if his bones are made of glass. Pietro seems to kneel smoothly enough, but Bucky can see him swaying slightly, the tremble in his shoulders, the rise of his chest more rapid than normal.

He looks ghastly, whip-marks ugly red and swollen, in some places skin so tight that Bucky knows an infection is brewing underneath.

As soon as the elevator closes, the boy crawls to him, pressing his forehead against the glass. Bucky does the same, watching their breaths fog the glass from both sides.

“Two to three days at most,” Bucky says.

Pietro nods.

They say nothing else.

\--

The next day, they both follow the routine. Pietro looks feverish, his eyes glazed and unfocused, his balance off. It takes him twice as long to shower; attempts to eat end with him dry-heaving and crawling back to bed, leaving most of the food untouched. When it comes time to kneel, Bucky has to yell and slam the glass to get him to wake up. Even then, it seems to take the boy forever to make his way to the middle of the cell and kneel. His palms stay pressed against the concrete until the elevator hisses. Only then does he push himself back and place his hands at the small of his back. They lead him out.

Bucky is hypnotized. He doesn’t remember what happens after, or the information he gives them, but the process appears to be satisfactory. When he returns to his cell, the boy is waiting by the glass. His mouth and cheek are bloody. His left arm is tucked against his stomach and the fingers of that hand look nearly shattered. He’s shaking so hard that his face has left smears of blood on the glass.

Bucky feels fury and despair. Has he done something under hypnosis that he shouldn’t have? Has he said something to make them unhappy?

He kneels next to the glass, opening his mouth to ask why, and rears back when Pietro smiles. His smile is sad but triumphant, his teeth bloody, the bruises making the smile into a grimace. The boy opens the palm of his right hand, and in it is a piece of glass, a small and wickedly sharp slice.

Bucky doesn’t understand right away. This place has dulled him, made him slow.

By the time he’s connected the dots, Pietro has already turned to the closest camera, the smile never wavering. Bucky’s shout doesn’t have time to fully form. The glass cuts deep across the pale throat, blood gushing out in a rush. The boy crumples to the ground.

The elevator hisses. Half a dozen men rush in, their panic obvious, their shouts incomprehensible. One of them is a medic who falls to his knees next to the boy, heedless of the blood. To Bucky, it all seems to be happening in slow motion, the drag of the glass across skin, the blood pouring out, the movements of the guards. It feels as if time itself has slowed down, as if he’s maybe dying too, his last moments stretching out forever. The shouts intensify and two men crowd next to the medic, pulling off their heavy-weight gloves and pressing their thumbs to the collar. The collar unlatches and slithers to the ground, now flexible as a snake, like something alive.

Bucky has time to see the gaping wound start to close on its own, and in the next instant, he is flying though the air, connecting to the glass wall behind him. He lands in glass, more showering on top of him, embedding in his back and knees and palms. It feels like a million razors slicing across his skin at once. There is an alarm going off, a sharp and nauseating sound that instantly makes his eyes water and his nose clog. It goes on for a few moments then stops with a wail, as if strangled. He lifts himself carefully, shards digging in deeper, and blinks at the cement floor underneath him. The white light he’d gotten used to is gone. He feels himself bleeding from dozens of small wounds, blood dripping down his ear and cheek, spattering on the floor underneath him.

He hears the glass crunch somewhere to his left, and struggles to his knees.

Under the pulsing emergency lights, the boy looks inhuman. His clothes are still bloody, the front of his shirt saturated down to his waist. But there is no gash on his throat. There are no cuts, no bruises, his skin perfectly smooth and unmarked. His feet are bare as he steps across the glass, and Bucky can see millions of little cuts on his feet forming and healing on their own.

Pietro extends his hand to Bucky, and he’s almost smiling, the corner of his mouth lifting up slightly, even as his eyes give away no emotion. Bucky reaches for the extended hand, and watches in awe as glass embedded in his palm is drawn out slowly, the cuts closing, the wounds healing.

He grasps the boy’s hand and finds it surprisingly warm, the temperature almost matching his own. The cells are gone, disintegrated. The guards look like crumpled and twisted piles of cloth and bone, as if a massive bomb had exploded in their midst. The doors and the steel supports still stand, buried in the cement, but the lack of glass has made them redundant. Pietro tugs on his hand.

“We need to go.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

He watches Pietro shift his fingers, and the steel elevator doors crumple inward. He watches him raise his hands towards the elevator ceiling, and the elevator move without protest. When they step out on the top floor, he watches dozens of bullets stop in the air in front of them, turn, and find those that fired them. He watches steel melt as they move past it, glass shatter, he hears the building foundations groan under their feet. He can smell Pietro now, and he smells like copper and ozone, like a bloody battlefield on a stormy night, like death by lightening.

He knows he should be afraid. He should be afraid of Pietro more that he’d been afraid of men who’d held them captive. But he’s seen this boy on his knees. He’s seen him bleed, and weep, and shudder in pain. He’s seen him press his palm to the glass as if he ached for human contact. He thinks that maybe, he is the only person in the world not in danger from this creature’s fury.

They make their way across the compound with ease, and in the beginning, Pietro’s actions are deadly but precise. Bullets traveling back to their owners, locks neatly separating themselves from the doors. The place is a maze, but Pietro pauses only once in a while, then continues on with certainty, as if feeling his way out. Tranquilizer bullets are replaced with real ones, then grenade-launchers and explosives. After a while, the boy constructs a shimmering dome that moves with them and serves as a shield. Bucky doesn’t know how, and doesn’t ask.

Then Pietro starts to lag. He doesn’t bother turning the bullets back. He pushes the gates and doors off their hinges. He blows a hole in a wall when going around it seems to be taking too long. Bucky moves closer to him, as if by his body heat alone, he could feed him strength. The kills are not clinical any more. The same power used to blow the doors now tears through men, separating limbs, tearing off skin and flesh. They’re leaving a larger and larger bloodbath behind with each step, until they’re finally in the hangar, sleek air jets rearing ahead.

“Can you fly one?” Pietro asks, sounding strained and breathless.  
“Yes. Any of them.”

It takes a while to make it to the closest one. When shooting doesn’t seem to work, an attempt is made to blow the jet. A shield forms above the plane too and Pietro stumbles, both shields wavering as he loses his balance. Bucky wraps an arm around him and gets him inside. It only takes him a moment to orient himself. It’s a muscle memory, flying. He doesn’t remember ever having done it before, but it feels as familiar as breathing.

The jet starts to lift and Pietro slips to his knees. His hands go up. Blood gushes from his nose and down his mouth and chin. Through the cockpit glass Bucky watches the hangar roof blow outward, steel and cement burying the jets left behind. As they rise through the opening, he watches the shield shimmer and shake, growing more unsteady with each passing moment.

He activates the stealth mode as soon as he can, probably sooner than he should.

“We’re safe,” he says, although he can say no such thing with certainty.

“Oh, good,” Pietro breathes next to him, and slides, almost gracefully, into unconsciousness.

\--

The jet is sleek and fast and far more advanced than anything Bucky thinks he’s flown before. Still, it takes him nearly ten hours to get to Scotland. He brings it down as low as he dares and leaves autopilot on. He parachutes. It’s a poor choice. He’s exhausted and the boy is a dead weight. He lands in the middle of nowhere. He has to carry Pietro for what seems like miles until he comes across any sign of habitation. He steals a car, wishing there was another way. Stolen vehicles can be traced. But he’ll be damned if he’s gonna drag the boy all the way to Red Point. There is a boat waiting for him, and he dumps the car as far away from it as he can.

It takes nearly three hours to get to Isle of Lewis, and by then, his vision is wavering and his right hand has a tremor that makes his grip uncertain. He walks because the safe house is not far, maybe a mile at most. Yet, it takes him hours. It feels like lifetimes have gone by since their escape, although barely twenty-four hours have passed.

When he sees the white stone in the distance, he nearly cries in relief. The house smells stale, and if possible, feels even colder than outside. He can’t be bothered to look for wood to start a fire. He can’t be bothered with the canned food in the pantry. He drags Pietro to the nearest bedroom, and drops him on the bed. Stumbling through the other two bedrooms, he gathers all the blankets and throws available, spreads them out over the boy, then crawls in next to him. He arranges his body to share as much heat as possible, and in moments, he’s out for the count.

\--

He wakes to light flickering across his eyelids. He takes stock of the ache in his bones and muscles, the painful pressure in the back of his head, his dry throat, and wants nothing more than to roll to the other side and drift back under. But the body next to him is gone.

His eyes fly open, his heart beating fast, already preparing to panic, and he sees Pietro standing next to the window. Pietro seems more human now than ever before, his hair messy, dark circles etched under his eyes, his entire form somehow fragile in the morning light. But he’s smiling, a full smile Bucky has never seen before, and the small dimple in his left cheek is somehow more devastating than all the wounds and bruises Bucky has had to witness.

The boy turns to him, his eyes registering something like awe.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Where are we?”  
“Scotland. Isle of Lewis.”

Surprise flickers across the boy’s face, but only for a moment, before he’s laughing, the sound bright and delighted,  
“How?”

Bucky shrugs, wincing at the pain in his shoulder,  
“Jet, car, boat. More walking that I would’ve preferred.”

“Are we safe here?”

Bucky opens his mouth, then closes it quickly, catching the lie before it has a chance to escape.

He doesn’t know how long Pietro has lived in captivity, but he wants to reassure him, to make him feel safe. He wants to give him at least a few moments of absolute freedom.

He wants to lie, but instead, he tells him the truth.

“I don’t know.”


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky starts a fire in the stove, and sets about heating canned soup. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Pietro wandering around the large space, his fingers dragging over chair backs, walls and windowpanes, feeling the texture of the curtains, bare toes testing the creak in the wooden floors. He disappears into the bathroom and Bucky hears water running first in the sink, then in the tub. He wonders if the boy wants to wash, but Pietro is already out of the bathroom and up the stairs. Bucky can hear his footsteps, first in one bedroom, then in the second. He hears the closet doors open and shut, the slide of the dresser drawers, a soft knock against a wood panel, more creaking. There is a loud slithering sound, a thump, then a sharp grind of wood and metal. He hears a soft whisper of Pietro’s feet on the wooden ladder leading to the attic. Bucky had only vaguely remembered this safe house when he chose it as their destination, and he has no memory of the attic at all. He doubts there is anything to see up there, and only moments later, he hears the boy climb back down.

There are a few bowls and cups in the cupboards, all covered in a layer of dust. The design on the bowls is unfamiliar, but for some reason, it makes Bucky think of obnoxiously colored pants flaring at the ankles, and a woman wearing a white headband. He ignores the memory trying to nudge him, and washes the bowls. He hears Pietro make his way back downstairs, then discover the door to the basement. The basement steps are stone, Bucky remembers that much, and he hears nothing from the boy for a few long minutes.

He’s sitting at the table, two bites into a lukewarm bowl of split pea soup, by the time Pietro makes his way back to the kitchen. The boy had found clothes in one of the upstairs closets, and exchanged his bloody shirt for a white button-up. It almost fits across his shoulders. Everywhere else, it looks at least two sizes too large.

Bucky gets him a bowl of chicken soup. They both consume two cans each in silence.

Bucky’s first order of business is to get the arm functioning again. There used to be a toolkit, just for that purpose, tucked away behind one of the stones in the basement wall. He doesn’t remember what the basement looks like, but once his feet land on the dirt floor, a muscle memory leads him to the far left corner, and the fifth stone from the ceiling. Tool kit in hand, he feels another nudge, and lets his muscle memory lead him where it wants. Below the stone staircase, there is a hidden hatch, leading to an escape tunnel. He had hoped for guns, but he supposes a back way out might be preferable to an altercation.

Upstairs, he finds that Pietro had crawled back under the blankets. He’s huddled on the very edge of the bed, the covers pulled up over his face, only a blonde tuft of hair sticking out. He looks fast asleep.

Bucky sets up at the kitchen table, where he can see all the windows, and keep an eye on the boy at the same time. He can hear the screech of the gulls in the distance. The sky is overcast. When the wind picks up, the old house will sigh and groan, making it hard to hear anyone approaching.

Bucky has no weapons. There is plenty of firewood, but it’s old; it burns hot but fast, and it won’t last them a week. The cans in the pantry will last two weeks at most. They can’t stay here any longer than a few days. He knows this. But he doesn’t know where to go next.

\--

Pietro wakes up as the sun is going down. By then, Bucky had fixed the arm, checked the entire house, and found two 9mm Berettas under the floorboards in the second bedroom. He knows that the boy is more dangerous than any weapon. But he feels better with a gun in his hand.

Pietro brings a blanket to the kitchen, wrapped around his shoulders like cape. He eats two more cans of soup. The house is wrapped in gloom, but Bucky doesn’t even consider lighting the oil lamps. If the boy wasn’t here, he wouldn’t have lit the fire either. The chimney smoke is a beacon to any random Hydra agent in the area. It’s a stupid risk.

The boy drags his chair over to the stove. He folds his legs up on the seat, so every inch of him is cocooned in the blanket.

“How long do we stay here?” he asks.

Bucky wants to say that they should’ve moved on already. Stripped the house of supplies, and been gone with the first light.

He isn’t even sure why he chose this safe house. The next closest one is over five hundred miles away, near Lisburn. He doesn’t feel safe here. But in all fairness, he doesn’t feel safe anywhere.

“A day or two.”  
“And then?”  
“I don’t know. Do you have family? Anyone looking for you?”

Pietro shakes his head. It’s dark enough now that Bucky can no longer see the expression on his face.

“I had a sister,” Pietro says, his voice soft, “They kept us together, in the beginning. Then things... went wrong.”

Bucky waits for him to elaborate, but Pietro never does.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assassination:  
> Orlando Letelier; a leading opponent of Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.  
> Ronni Karpen Moffitt (the woman with the white headband); a development associate at the Institute for Policy Studies  
> September 21, 1976, car bombing, Washington, D.C


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky sleeps a little, the sleep of military men everywhere, drifting across the thin barrier between dreams and wakefulness. Pietro goes back to the bed, but he’s up again before sunrise. He drifts from room to room, still wrapped in a blanket, silent and restless. The wind picks up as the sky grows lighter. The howl in the eaves grates on Bucky’s nerves. He’s been slightly on edge ever since they’d arrived, but the feeling is more intense now.

He needs to make a decision. They can’t stay here. Going back to the boat would be a mistake, and stealing another feels too risky. Stealing a car is more promising, but there is nothing for miles. He would need to leave the boy here, steal a car, then come back for him. Except that leaving him alone, even for a few hours, also feels like a mistake.

His instincts are screaming that he needs to go, but every plan he comes up with feels wrong.

In one of the closets, Pietro finds an enormous wool sweater that reaches half-way down to his knees. The thing would be large on Bucky; on Pietro, it looks absurd. For some reason, the sight of it has a calming effect on Bucky’s nerves. He heats up more soup.

\--

“Tell me about your sister,” he says.

Pietro chokes on the soup. He looks shocked by the question. As if he’d expected Bucky not to bring it up again.

“You said ‘they’ kept you together at first. Who are ‘they?’ Not the same assholes you decimated on our way out. You wouldn’t have left without looking for her.”

Pietro drops the spoon into the bowl, and leans back in the chair.

It will take a lot more than a few cans of soup to put meat back on his bones, but Bucky thinks the boy looks better already. The dark circles under his eyes are still there, and no amount of heat or sleep has managed to put any color in his cheeks. But his eyes are alive. That cold mask, the terrifying blankness Pietro had worn all those months in the cell, seems gone for good.

“Tell me about your arm,” he counters, and it’s Bucky’s turn to be surprised.

He leans back as well, and they stare at each other across the table, listening to the wind rattle the window panes.

For the hundredth time since leaving the compound, Bucky wonders why he’s not afraid. Pietro is dangerous. So dangerous, that Bucky can’t imagine who would be stupid enough to try and control him. The cold, logical part of him has weighed the risks and benefits of trying to leash Pietro, and found neutralization to be the only safe outcome.

“It’s Soviet made,” he hears himself say, “I was an assassin, for USSR.”  
“How many people did you kill?”  
“I don’t know. Hundreds? Thousands? I don’t remember all of them.”

Bucky expects him to be unsettled by the answer, but instead, Pietro looks relieved.

“It was my sister they wanted,” Pietro says, folding his arms.

There is something defensive, but also vulnerable about the gesture.

“She was always special. She would look at you, and you would want to tell her your darkest secrets. She could move things with her mind. Little things. When we were children--“ he pauses to clear his throat, “When we were children, she would make the dolls dance so I would laugh. But it wasn’t enough. They wanted her stronger.”  
“Who is ‘they?’”  
“They called themselves Hydra.”

It should come as a shock, but it doesn’t. Bucky even thinks he must have known, on some level. Perhaps one of those memories that are so faint and indistinct, that he can never be sure if they are real.

He’s not, and never has been, Hydra’s only project. That much he’s always known.

“They injected us both with something that was supposed to make her stronger. I don’t think they expected it to work on me. She got stronger. I got sick. It upset her, me being sick, so they separated us. But they kept giving me the stuff, and I kept getting sicker.”

Pietro stops there. He is no longer looking at Bucky. His gaze is unfocused, staring at some distant spot behind Bucky’s shoulder.

When he speaks again, his voice is softer, uncertain.

“I think I did die. I could feel her, before. When she was upset. When she was hurt. They separated us, but I could always point a finger in her direction, no matter how many times they moved us. After, there was-- nothing. I was all alone. For the first time, I couldn’t feel her at all, and I--“  
“You panicked,” Bucky says, everything suddenly clicking into place.  
“I didn’t know what would happen. They never said what they were giving me. What it was supposed to do.”  
“What did happen?”  
“People died,” he says, tone striving for nonchalance, and falling miles short, “A lot of people.”  
“Hydra,” Bucky says firmly, because the boy should know there is a distinction.  
“Maybe. Under the ground, where we were held, probably. But above, I think-- it was a hospital of some kind. When the ceiling came down, there were supplies, medical supplies, wheelchairs, hospital beds with-- with people still in them.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that revelation. He’s not sure he has a right to say anything at all. How many innocent people died at his hands? More than he can count.

“I don’t remember much of it,” Pietro says, “Just tearing apart everything that got in my way.”

He remembers enough to mention the wheelchairs, the hospital beds. Bucky would argue that he remembers enough to still be fucked up about it, to feel guilty, even if he won’t say it out loud.

“I think they used a tranquilizer gun to take me down. I never even felt it. But before I passed out, I saw her. I saw Wanda.”

His eyes finally meet Bucky’s,  
“She-- looked at me like she didn’t even know me. She looked _afraid_.”

The boy’s eyes are large and lost, and Bucky wants to reach across the table for his hand. He can’t remember ever wanting to hug another human being, but he wants to do so now, he wants to offer some comfort, something that would make Pietro’s pain less.

“You are not afraid of me,” Pietro says.

It’s not a question, so Bucky says nothing in response. It seems to be the right thing to do, because the boy slumps slightly, the tension in him unwinding. Now he just looks like a kid, exhausted by the ordeal of reliving the past.

“The next time I woke up I was in the glass cell,” he says, “You know the rest.”

Bucky is certain that Hydra had sold Pietro; they’d created something too powerful to control, and sold it to the highest bidder. The highest bidder was probably a well-funded terrorist organization, one that had a history of alliance with Hydra. From what he’d seen, an organization with more money than common sense. It would not be hard to dig them out. Bucky had moved seamlessly among terrorist cells for decades.

“I’m going back to bed,” Pietro says.

\--

It’s not yet noon when Bucky crawls into bed next to Pietro, and pokes him in the shoulder.

“You’re not sleeping. Go and keep watch so I can sleep.”

“There is nothing out there but wind and seagulls,” Pietro says, his voice muffled by the blankets.  
Bucky pokes him again,  
“Don’t be an asshole. I’m tired.”

Pietro groans and rolls over, pulling the blankets with him. Bucky has to pull them back. They scuffle over the blankets for a few minutes, until Pietro overbalances and nearly pitches himself, face first, off the bed. He catches himself at the last moment and lets out a startled laugh, the sound of it echoing in the empty room.

Bucky wants to push him off the bed, but he can feel a smile tugging at his mouth, and he hides it by stealing all of the blankets back.

Pietro flops back on the pillow,  
“This is the only warm place in the house. Don’t make me leave.”  
“Fine. But I sleep, and you stay awake.”  
“Deal. Can I have some blankets back?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but lets Pietro burrow back under the blankets, until he’s nearly on top of Bucky, his icy feet finding their way in between Bucky’s calves.

“Jesus, kid. It’s not that cold.”  
“It’s freezing. I’ve been cold since we got here,” Pietro says.

He sounds vaguely outraged, as if the weather is attacking him, personally.

Bucky can feel his hot breath on the side of his neck.

“No sleeping,” he warns again.  
“No sleeping, old man. Close your eyes already.”

Bucky does.


	9. Chapter 9

He wakes exactly three hours later. There are a few seconds of disorientation, but he’s no longer unsettled by them. In the beginning, they happened each time he slept and woke. By the time he was captured, they were happening approximately once a week. In the glass cell, he’d woken up disoriented only twice, both times after they’d knocked him unconscious.

His mind does what it has done pretty consistently since his New York assignment. It flashes through the cold of the cryo, his last target, a familiar neighborhood, a series of black and white photos. The first time, it took hours to piece himself back together. This time, in a matter of two breaths, the crooked puzzle falls into place. It’s missing more pieces than it should, but he knows who he is. The Winter Soldier. The Asset. James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038.

“Who’s Steve?”

Bucky opens his eyes to find Pietro sitting up in bed, cocooned in blankets.

The wind has died down. Bucky listens to the old house for a few moments, ensuring that nothing had changed while he slept. The boy must have tended to the fire, because Bucky can hear the crackle of dry wood. There is a lingering scent of chicken soup. He can still hear the seagulls, but the sound is fainter, further away.

Pietro pokes him in the shoulder,  
“Who’s Steve?”

“A friend,” Bucky says.

At least, he thinks so. Those memories, the ones from before The Soldier, the ones tied to James Buchanan Barnes 32557038, are fractured beyond recognition. The holes between them are so large, he could fit an entire lifetime in the empty space, and never even come close to filling them up. Steve is nothing but an impression. A fierce protectiveness. A taste of oranges. A scream in the howling wind, mountain peaks against the steel grey sky.

“A good friend?” Pietro asks, fiddling with the edge of a blanket.

“A dead friend.”

\--

There are canned peaches at the very back of the shelf, hidden behind all the other cans. Bucky thinks they’ll be an improvement over the soup, but he’s wrong. They’re so sweet, they make his teeth ache. Even the texture is... disturbing, to say the least. He forces himself to eat half of a can, then decides he’s perfectly content with soup. Pietro consumes two cans in record time, then finishes off Bucky’s too.

Half an hour later, Pietro looks ready to vibrate out of his skin. Bucky checks the list of ingredients, and sure enough, at forty grams of sugar per can, the kid probably consumed close to a hundred and twenty grams in under five minutes.

Bucky watches him run down to the basement three times. He watches him run upstairs five times, each time coming down with an increasingly more bizarre collection of clothing. Another giant sweater with a missing sleeve. Rain boots, three sizes too large. A bright red winter hat, with an enormous white woolen ball attached to the top. When he comes down the stairs wearing snow pants literally yanked up to his armpits, Bucky decides he’s had enough.

“Put the rain boots back on. We’re going for a walk.”

\--

In the end, there are no boots that fit him. They find a pair of dirty sneakers in the back of a closet. They’re a size too large, but Pietro solves the issue by pulling on a pair of thick woolen socks, riddled with moth holes. Bucky puts on the sweater with the missing sleeve - the wrong sleeve, as it happens - and a wool coat that barely fits across his shoulders. He stretches his arms, and the lining rips. Pietro giggles.

It’s cold outside, the sky overcast and dull. Bucky can’t hear the ocean, but the smell of it is strong. He can taste salt in the back of his throat. 

They look like vagrants. Suspicious, even from a distance. It would help if the kid wasn’t wearing three sweaters, one on top of the other. Bucky almost changes his mind. But Pietro is still vibrating, and now he looks excited, bouncing on his toes. To the left, there is nothing but dry grass and gentle slopes of distant hills. Ahead, more of the same. To the right, the dry grass goes on for nearly a mile, ending at the ocean. Bucky had some vague idea of picking a safe direction, but now, that idea seems as ridiculous as Pietro’s sweaters. To Bucky, the only safe direction leads back inside the safety of the walls.

He touches the guns tucked in his belt, takes a deep breath, and turns right.

\--

“You are not Russian born,” Pietro says.

He’s trying to look in every direction at once. So is Bucky, but for different reasons. Pietro seems interested in everything, although there is nothing to see but grass, sea, and sky. Bucky feels horribly exposed. If he were a sniper on any of the surrounding hills, he would shoot them both on principle alone. Against the bleak landscape, they stick out like sore thumbs. 

“Is that a question?”  
“Not if you don’t want it to be,” Pietro says, studying the grass.

Bucky touches the guns again. Just for reassurance.

“I was born in Brooklyn. New York.”

Pietro plucks a tiny yellow flower, tucks it behind his ear, then turns to beam at Bucky. The tip of his nose is red from cold. There are two spots of color, high in his cheeks. He looks... Bucky doesn’t have the words for it. Happy, maybe. But also small and breakable and impossibly young. Looking at him makes Bucky’s chest hurt.

He looks away.

“My sister and I, we were born in Serbia. Southeastern Europe.”  
“I know where Serbia is,” Bucky says gruffly.

He remembers it vividly. Belgrade in the spring. Orange tulips and weeping willows. A woman with bushy black hair; a small silver cross on a delicate chain around her neck. A reporter, he thinks. It’s possible they hadn’t told him anything about her, except that she had to die.

He was supposed to make it look like suicide. She’d fought like a wildcat. Stabbed him in the arm with his own knife. He remembers being impressed, even as he left her in a blood-soaked chair, his own gun, now covered in her fingerprints, on the floor by her feet. He remembers being punished afterwards.

“Our parents were Romani,” Pietro says.  
“Huh,” Bucky says absently, “You don’t look it.”

Another few dozen yards, and they should be able to see the ocean in the distance. Bucky thinks this is probably a good time to turn back. The sky has grown darker and more oppressive, the clouds perfectly still despite the wind. He thinks it’s going to rain soon. He doesn’t mind being cold, but he draws the line at cold _and_ wet.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Pietro says.

He sounds genuinely hurt, his voice tight.

“What?” Bucky is lost, “About what?”

“Of course I don’t look it,” Pietro snaps, “You think I was born looking like a freak? I told you my own twin sister didn’t know me.”

Bucky stops in his tracks. He feels stupid. Scratch that. He _is_ stupid.

“You didn’t look like this before,” he says.  
“No. I looked like my parents. Like my sister. Now I look like a white fucking lab rat. Thanks. For the reminder.”

Pietro turns abruptly, and starts heading back towards the house. His shoulders are stiff, even underneath the three giant sweaters. Bucky follows a step behind him, feeling small.

“Ne ljuti se, nisam znao,” he says.

Pietro trips over his feet. He glares back at Bucky, who does his best to look contrite. It’s not a facial expression he remembers using before.

“Ne misliš prije nego što govoriš,” Pietro says, but he doesn’t sound nearly as upset any more.

“U pravu si. Nisam mislio.”

“Stop agreeing with me,” Pietro says, wiping his runny nose on his sleeve, “It’s creeping me out.”  
“Sure, but-- you know I wasn’t born with a metal arm either, right? They cut that part of me off. Replaced it with a weapon,” Bucky says slowly, “I know what it’s like, to look in a mirror, and not recognize the person looking back.”  
  
Pietro crosses his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits. He’s probably doing it to keep his fingers warm, but it makes him look like a disgruntled five year old. Despite it, or maybe because of it, Bucky feels a powerful surge of affection for the kid.

“Maybe I overreacted,” Pietro says.

Bucky shrugs,  
“Maybe you didn’t. Either way, you don’t have to carry all that crap alone.”

Pietro frowns into the distance, chewing his bottom lip. Bucky feels a rain drop strike his forehead. Another, larger than the first, lands on his nose.

\--

By the time they make it back, they’re both soaked to the skin. Even Bucky is shivering. There are only a few articles of clothing in the upstairs closets that hadn’t been damaged by mold or moths. Pietro had picked through all of them, and made a small pile on one of the chairs. Bucky settles for a pair of pants he can only sort of zip up, and a shirt with holes in both elbows. He leaves the warmest articles of clothing for Pietro, who doesn’t disappoint, and puts all of them on at once. He practically waddles down the stairs.

They huddle next to the stove, and Bucky heats up more soup.

Pietro grumbles. He’s sick of soup. They’re both sick of soup. It seems ridiculous that the soup is the tipping point, especially considering the unappetizing mush they both lived on. But Bucky is done being indecisive. It is past time they move on.

“Tonight, after dark, I’m going to steal a car.”  
“Alone?”  
“The next town is a few miles away. It’ll go faster if I’m alone. Just be ready to go before sunrise.”  
“Okay,” Pietro says, but he doesn’t sound happy about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Ne ljuti se, nisam znao - Don't be angry, I didn't know  
> Ne misliš prije nego što govoriš - You don't think before you speak  
> U pravu si. Nisam mislio - You're right. I didn't think
> 
> Assassination:  
> Radislava "Dada" Vujasinović; a Serbian journalist and reporter for the news magazine Duga, published in Belgrade. Died April 8th, 1994.


	10. Chapter 10

Bucky puts the damp clothing back on. The wet pair is the only pair of pants that fits him, and the rain has not quite let up as much as he’d hoped. He will be soaked to the skin again, long before he encounters another human being.

Pietro fidgets, pretending that he’s not watching Bucky get ready. He still doesn’t look happy about Bucky’s plan, but doesn’t say anything about it.

“Wait about an hour, then let the fire go out,” Bucky says.  
“I know.”  
“Don’t light any of the lamps.”  
“I won’t.”  
“If anyone shows up that’s not me--“  
“Run, if I can. Hide, if I can’t run.”  
“The escape tunnel in the basement--“  
“Leads back to the boat you used to get us here. I know.”  
“Just don’t--“  
“Blow the place up, and attract every person in the five-hundred mile radius. I know. For fuck’s sake. I know.”  
“Don’t swear.”

The kid had found a moth-eaten scarf somewhere, and insisted on wrapping it around Bucky’s neck. At Bucky’s admonishment, he pulls the ends of the scarf just a bit too tight, and smiles brightly.  
“Odjebi.”

Bucky checks the guns again, although he’s already done it three times. He doesn’t want to leave the kid alone. It feels wrong. His mind obediently runs through all the options available to them both, as it has done numerous times over the last two days. They all feel wrong.

“Be ready to go before sunrise.”  
“I know.”

The kid sounds like his patience is wearing thin. Bucky needs to go.

He pauses at the door to look back, another warning lodging in his throat. Pietro is standing next to the kitchen table, hands tucked in overlong sleeves, his face tight and worried.

He meets Bucky’s eyes with no hesitation, and makes an attempt at a smile. It’s shaky as hell, but genuine.

“Be careful,” he says.

Bucky nods, and steps out into the rain.

\--

It takes him two hours to reach any sign of civilization. It’s an old farmhouse, and the truck parked near the rear looks to be on its last legs. A dog barks from the inside of the house. Someone shouts to silence it. Bucky is still far enough away that the dog obeys, but if he were to move closer, it would start up again. The truck doesn’t seem worth all the trouble. He moves on.

They can’t take the ferry from Stornoway. Too large, too risky, too likely to have informants. The ferry at Tarbert is a better choice by far, but it’s close to two hours away, and he doesn’t want a piece of junk that will break down half-way there. He also doesn’t want a vehicle that will look suspicious abandoned, because taking a stolen car onto the ferry itself is out of the question.

Another hour passes before he comes across a village. It’s small, some forty houses in all. Most of the windows are dark. He creeps around the entire village before making his way among the houses. He feels comfortable now, in his own element. There are a few larger vehicles, but most of them are small and nondescript. In the end, he chooses an old Astra. It’s seen better days, but the tire treads feel barely worn under his fingers, and the color seems to be some unmemorable dark blue. The mileage is high, and unless the gas gauge is broken, the tank is nearly three-quarters full. It will do.

He works on jimmying the lock, silently, slowly, already planning their next destination from Uig Port. If his memory serves him right, there were a few campsites next to the terminal. Once they cross, they could rest for a while before continuing on.

He hears a whisper of movement behind him just a second too late. Pain explodes in the back of his head. Adrenaline spikes, and he is half turned to fight even as his knees fold, and the second burst of pain shoots through his temple.

His face hits the mud, and just before consciousness leaves him, he remembers Pietro as he last saw him, standing next to the kitchen table, telling him to be careful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Odjebi - Fuck off


End file.
